Warning: from this chapter on. The psychology in Harry’s mind is in 3rd level interview. There’s grooming and more. Consider before continue.
“I was thirteen when she’s thirty,” I say thoughtfully. Slowly, I saunter back and forth in Elise’s room, then stop at the window. For quite some time, I stay silent, letting my mind remember the memory I already erased. She doesn’t push me, just sitting there, watching the sky behind me as I turn to face her. The light dims out in a sudden, just a cloud dune passing by. They say there will be no rain today, but they also say another storm is forming and about to hit the country. I light up a cigarette, don’t even need to ask now, we’ve already passed that. “Turn off your phone. You can retell my story only in your mind.”
“Agree.” She shows me her phone is off, then she moves her chair closer to me. Her eyes trace the dispersing smoke, her expression unreadable. “Let’s hear about that woman who makes you, you.”
“I had a buffalo friend when I was a kid. I didn’t name it like others though. I was a farmer boy, picking up wild grass so my father’s grain could thrive.” I look at the beige ceiling, and the scene comes back to me. “Then I came to this concrete jungle, suffocating in its confinement.” The cigarette trembles slightly between my fingers, and I hate that she sees it.
She nods, her fingers tapping on each other in a rhythm as if she’s conducting the flow. I had a pet lizard. My sister hung it from her toy rod and chased flies with it. Strange what stays with us, isn’t it?”
I smile in agreement. “I wonder if those memories actually shape us. Please sit. I’m going to brighten the room a bit more.”I do it not to see more clearly, but to prevent the shadows from speaking for me. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. You have manual control of the led. Our new house has the same system. We were thrilled.”
Elise shifts her posture a bit, ready to hear the change of my life she already knew in our previous interview. I can sense her focus, her intensity, her every fiber yearning for my tragedy.
“Glamorous seduction, that’s what I see in this city. One late bill after another, then my father got a new friend. They went and came back late, then they went overnight. My mother nagged, of course, then they fought.” She knows what I mean, I can see her pupils dilate into her own trauma. The kind only a kid with unhappy married parents has. I walk to her and tap one finger on the back of her hand.
She tilts her head up. Our eyes cross and seem to send a message we both understand but can’t describe. “Please continue,” she says.
“I interfere. My father bash my head with his folded raincoat.” I caress the back of my neck, feeling the ghost strike absentmindedly. “My mother went crazy, ‘what the fuck are you doing, motherfucker. You can’t discipline by hitting the head. What if he becomes half-wit’. The next thing I remember, they fought with whatever they could grab their hands on until the police came. Then my mother never came back.”
“Do you still hate her now?” Elise asks. She holds my hand now. I can sense tenderness beneath the callousness of her fingers, beneath the cold of her skin. “Sorry.” She shakes her head. “You take care of Cuong’s mother well.”
“Believe me, I still do,” I say. I withdraw my hand and sit across from her now. “I understand but there’s something in me that can’t forgive her for abandoning me with my wretched father. She could’ve fought for me. She should’ve.”
Elise puts both hands over mine. Her touch is gentle, way too gentle. It forces grief to surface, not push it down. “That pain must have been crushing. No one blames a child for feeling abandoned, even when they know the reasons,” she says, looking over the window, to the far horizon behind me, then back at me. “I think her best shot is to find herself a shelter first before she can take you with her. It’s unfortunate that she can’t make it.” That seems to loosen the knot in my stomach. My hands shake a little.
I drag the chair forward with me, our knees almost touch. “You know the next part. I was sold to the Jade Dragon, becoming their forger. I was there for several years, working in the shadow of a lamp, forging tax seals in the back room of a funeral parlor. I found my mother’s name when I was thirteen, I cried, I refused to work.” I clench my fists reimagining the name long forgotten.
Elise closes her eyes and inhales deeply. When she opens them again, she looks at me directly. “Does it hurt?”
I clear my throat. “No.” I lie, and I know that she knows. I take out my handkerchief and wipe my face with it. Either the light has warmed the room or me walking through my memory has taken a tool, it doesn’t matter. I continue, “Aunty Three visited me at last. She hovered in my confined room, quiet first, then everywhere. She wore a black silk dress with a golden phoenix embroidery, black ink on her thighs. I hate the way my body reacted to her presence. It shifted from anger to something… hungry.”
Elise leans in, choosing the words again in her mind. “Like a black cloud from a far that doesn’t rain on you, but you could see its lighting?”
I snort. “That’s a weird way to put it but yes, I can sense her wrath. She stood there, then asked me politely, ‘what can I do for you, handsome boy?’”
Elise frowns. “Can you elaborate?”
I was confused like Elise at the time. Aunty Three was too polite and that was scarier than anything. I know now that they always let you speak your demand and offer your own prize to make it look like it was your choice. “Most of our talks are not mentioning a catch phrase. You have to fill it out and act accordingly,” I say, “I stopped working because I want to meet the boss for a new deal. She offered me a favor and awaited my pledge in exchange.” I stare blankly behind Elise as if seeing the ghost of Aunty Three in the corner, awaiting my proposal. “I grab her arm, tracing the jade dragon tattoo swirling around it up to her shoulder. “Bury my mother, help me with the funeral and I’ll be yours. You’re already mine, she said to me. I’ll kill and die for you, god-mother, I proposed to her. Then I kiss her hand.” Then she patted my head, I can’t say that to Elise, not yet.
Elise clears her throat. “But I think working for them already got you some money. You could have buried your mother.”
“My father stole them. I was too young to have a bank account and nowhere to hide the money,” I say with an increasing heat rising from my chest. Even now, the memory of my father is still burning.
Elise pulls me into her chest. Her perfume smooth my senses, but deep down, a smell reemerges and haunts my mind. Formaldehyde, jasmine, gear oil—Aunty Three’s smell when she hugged me into her chest and called me ‘my little boy’.
I didn’t become hers that day. I realize I have been hers since the moment she walked in.
So tragic that his mother died. 💔😢
And him having to deal with so much hell at such a young age.
Very traumatizing…
There’s a strong ugly bargain at the centre of this chapter, and the final turn works because it makes the kindness feel predatory in retrospect. I do think the piece would hit harder if it trusted implication a little more, though. The horror is already there. It doesn’t need quite so much light held over it in my opinion.